Vancouver, Canada – A debate over response strategies to pro-Palestinian ads in Vancouver has begun after a pro-Israel U.S. organization began running ads supporting Israel.
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THE TIMES OF ISRAEL (http://bit.ly/HL8N4v) reports that, in response to a series of pro-Palestinian ads which ran in the city’s subway system recently, StandWithUs, a pro-Israel group based out of southern California, began running its pro-Israel response ad campaign in October.
At issue, is an ongoing debate among leading Canadian Jewish organizations as to whether responding to the pro-Palestine ads at all simply plays into their hands, in essence giving them added publicity by recognizing their ads in the first place—never mind running a counter ad campaign.
Shimon Fogel, CEO for Canada’s Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), said, “These kind of anti-Israel initiatives mostly don’t gain a whole lot of traction with the public and what we’re trying to avoid is giving it oxygen that it wouldn’t otherwise benefit from.”
StandWithUs officials look at it differently, saying their decision to run the response ads was a “no brainer,” since they are in the business of responding to anti-Israeli messing no matter where it takes place.
StandWithUs’ CEO Roz Rothstein said, “We put up the ads because that is what we do. We respond to misinformation about Israel, whether it’s on campus or in billboards or in newspapers or in film—that’s what we do.”
Mary Roth, from the Palestine Awareness Coalition (PAC) that ran the original anti-Israel ads, said the coalition is “delighted” with the StandWithUs response campaign.
“As a matter of fact that was what guaranteed the success of the campaign. This gave us the kind of publicity we never could have dreamed of otherwise,” Roth said.
Meryle Kates, executive director of StandWithUs-Canada, said Roth’s viewpoint never even enters into the group’s decision making process.
“That’s not part of our thinking. We responded because we know thousands of riders were learning maybe the only facts in history that they would know about Israel… and that it was all lies,” Kates said. “We’re not of the opinion that it’s okay to just ignore it — that’s a problem, to ignore it, actually.”